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northwood wrote:and in some states you NEED a master degree to even land a teaching position

Always helps to go for a master's degree even if your state doesn't require it. If you work for the public school system, chances are it'll be paid, take 2 years of your time, and give you a 2-5k increase in pay.

WRONG!!!!!!!The days of states/ districts paying for your master degree has gone. They want that degree BEFORE they hire you,

It's obviously no use arguing with ResolutePear about this. Especially if you have actually been a teacher and know how the system works.

Teaching sucks. Did it for 3years at one of the worst high schools in my state. QoL for teachers can suck. Teachers get shit on day in and day out if their students do well and even when they do well you still get shit on.

Parents of bad kids guilt trip you for not doing enough.Parents of good kids "helicopter" and try to convince you you're not good enough to be teaching their kid. (my SO experience a lot of this at her affluent public school)

Teaching can be a constant guilt trip. Its an exercise in patience. My entire life for three years revolved around me being patient. It got really fucking old. Also, briefing cases>>>>>>>>>>>>> grading essays.

For the record though, my SO loves her job. My good friends love their jobs as teachers. I did not.

Also, I do not speak for all teachers or the field of teaching in general. I taught at a shitty high school and never really wanted to be a teacher anyway.

Lastly, I heard the QoL for cops is horrible. They drink more than lawyers and beat their wives when they're done. They also deal with all the kids that I had the luxury of watching get expelled. Getting them expelled was hard enough, think how bad it is to get them in jail.

Having done it for a couple years myself, I can say that teaching is a really easy job to do OK at, but impossibly difficult to be great at. I knew people that put in 60-70 hour weeks routinely. I was not one of those people.

SBL wrote:Having done it for a couple years myself, I can say that teaching is a really easy job to do OK at, but impossibly difficult to be great at. I knew people that put in 60-70 hour weeks routinely. I was not one of those people.

Don't ban me again but aren't you like 24 years old and currently in law school? How is it possible that you taught "for a couple of years?"

I got a job through the Teach For America program and taught for 2 years following college (roughly ages 21-23, I'm 25 now).

Sounds like you didn't want to actually be a lawyer- just earn what you thought was a lawyer's salary. That obviously was the wrong reason to go to law school, but it doesn't mean that nobody else should go. Some people actually want to be lawyers, even at $35k/year and with 30+ years of debt.

That is fair and you are absolutely right. There are doubtless people that are great fits for law, even if it means the low salaries that dominate the market these days.

And yes I did hope to earn a decent salary, something along the lines of 70-80k that my school listed as the median. And yes I thought that being top 10% and LR with a variety of legal experience throughout school would mean I would actually have some bites in employment asides from clerkships.

But the rewarding government jobs start at 30-40k in most states, and the more important part is that in many states those jobs don't even have open positions for anyone. I agree that if you have passion for the law it is worth it, but for me, I find no enjoyment in sitting at the computer screen pushing paper and contemplating whether R. 52-973C(d) can apply if the defense filed a motion seven days ago and not 15 days ....

So I ask, what is it that makes you certain you will enjoy being a lawyer at a low salary?

I'm not certain of this and never claimed to be. I was saying that it seemed like you didn't want to be a lawyer. When I hear people give advice here like "you should just be an engineer, or a doctor, or a fireman, etc." I know that advice is coming from people who didn't want to be lawyers.

Also, I was a teacher. 30-40k sounds pretty great to me.

which state did you work in? In CA, teachers can make well over $70K. Considering it costs far less and takes less time to become a teacher, it's probably a better option than becoming a lawyer for many people.